


mixed form

by shorttfuse



Series: multi-fandom mini-fics [7]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-18 02:37:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11282013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shorttfuse/pseuds/shorttfuse
Summary: Andrew is not a sentimental man. He has made sure of it.





	mixed form

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know what this is, i just got real emotional about andrew minyard caring about neil josten for like half an hour and wrote this. 
> 
> it's not really fic and it's not really poetry but it's not really anything else, either.

If Andrew was a sentimental man, he might marvel at the way Neil's hand fits into his, fingers slotting together like a key in a lock. Like the lost piece of a forgotten puzzle, long thought missing, sliding into place. Scars and calluses and all finding a home in the palm of another. Not gentle, but right.

If Andrew was a sentimental man, he might think that maybe it's an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Pushing against each other for eternity, neither giving an inch. Holding each other up. Keeping each other grounded. A fight both of them are destined to lose but unwilling to quit.

If Andrew was a sentimental man, he might say their souls match. A pair of people with pasts that aren't identical but are familiar. Cruelty, no matter the form, chews people up and spits them out into similar shapes. There are multitudes of ways to break a person. There are only so many ways a person breaks. That phrase....history doesn't repeat itself but sometimes it rhymes. They are separate lines of a poem, a tragedy on their own but maybe, paired together, something a little less than calamity.

Neil was willing to die for a few minutes, hours, months of a game and a home and a place to belong. Andrew knows what it's like to want something so badly you let it destroy you. They both still bear the scars of their desire. A matched set. The crux of it is this: Andrew thinks Neil Josten could destroy him. Andrew thinks he would let him. Andrew, sometimes, thinks that maybe it's already happened. 

Andrew is not a sentimental man. He has made sure of it. Andrew deals in truths and bargains and the sharp edge of a knife. Sentiment has no place among them. Andrew does not have the vocabulary for sentiment, nothing that would mean anything, no words that don't stick in his throat and clog his mouth, keeping themselves imprisoned behind his teeth. Sentiment is a language Andrew does not know how to speak. Once, in a moment of weakness, Andrew quietly thought that maybe it could be a language Neil Josten could teach him, but Andrew does not make a habit of lying to himself. It is not as though Neil Josten has any more use for the tongue than him.

As it is, he kisses Neil with determination, with hatred, with interest, with something as close to an emotion as Andrew is willing to admit to. As it is, Andrew closes his eyes and thinks of sunrise, of death, of Abram, of what the three have in common. 

Andrew is not a sentimental man, but if he was, he still wouldn't call Neil his answer. But he might yet call him his home.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr (rarely): shorttfuse  
> i'm on twitter (always): shorttfuse_


End file.
